


Maize

by Rhensis



Category: Free!
Genre: Blindness, Fluff, M/M, Synesthesia, tbh it's just these two dorks being disgustingly grossly cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 10:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2544989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhensis/pseuds/Rhensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nagisa helps Rei give colours the meaning he's always been searching for.</p>
<p>(aka I can't summarise fics at all even after spending half an hour staring at the summary box just read it okay?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maize

His fingers scramble around his desk, searching for the thin wires that mark out his headphones. It’s odd for him not to put them back where he always does, and he curses himself under his breath for just making his life more difficult for no good reason.

Keeping everything in order, in a certain place, means that he’s never left searching for something that he needs. Right now, just when he really needs his headphones, he’s starting to realise just why he follows these patterns.

He supposes, for a split second, that he could simply listen to it through his speakers, but swiftly decides against that idea. He always finds it more difficult to concentrate when the sounds are coming through his speakers and not his headphones. It always feels like the noise is stifling him, like it’s surrounding him on all sides and almost laughing at him.

Which is, he realises, a really stupid fear, considering the fact that they’re sounds. Of course they can’t laugh at him, they don’t have the capacity for conscious amusement, and that doesn’t take into account the impossibility of sounds being able to laugh in any way without some kind of physical body to aid them.

He drops another curse as his fingers find the edge of his laptop again. The frustration is starting to bubble in the pit of his stomach as they move to the left again, and still find nothing.

He slams a hand against his desk. If only he hadn’t been so careless as to not put them back where they need to go-

“Rei-chan?” Usually, he’d instinctively turn his head towards the sound of that voice, but this time he keeps his head still, if bowed a little. “Are you okay?”

“Fantastic, Nagisa-kun,” he replies a little harsher than he probably should, and he hears Nagisa suck in a quiet breath.

The footsteps that follow alert Rei to Nagisa’s presence, but he doesn’t move. No, instead he stays exactly as he is, eyes squeezed shut as if to hide the tears that are pricking the back of his eyes.

A hand brushes across the top of Rei’s head delicately as if asking for permission, and Rei nods slightly, giving Nagisa the signal to entwine his fingers in Rei’s hair. Moving his fingers slowly, he leans down and places his chin on top of Rei’s shoulder in a familiar position that Rei can’t help but lean back into.

“Do you need help, Rei-chan?” Nagisa whispers, and Rei reluctantly makes a small noise in the back of his throat.

“I can’t find my headphones.” He mumbles, tapping his fingers against the wooden desk with irritation.

“Oh! Well you’ll need them for the present I brought you, Rei-chan, so I’ll help you find them!” Nagisa’s head is gone, and Rei can hear him fumbling around behind him, so he swivels the chair around.

“Present?” He asks slightly nervously. The last present that Nagisa brought him just happened to be enough food for five courses, of which Rei only had small portions of two whilst Nagisa finished the rest off. And though Nagisa’s company was of course more than welcome, Rei doesn’t exactly want a repeat of that incident, especially not after the way his father had laughed when he’d come home and been greeted by the sight of a small boy lying on the floor surrounded by bowls with Rei standing on the sidelines with an expression of utter horror.

Besides, his parents will be home in only an hour or so, so they certainly don’t have time to cook everything that they did that night, let alone even begin eating it.

“Yes, but you’ll have to wait until later. As for right now, we have to find- Ah, here they are!” Nagisa says triumphantly.

The same fingers that tangled themselves in Rei’s hair a moment ago now curl around Rei’s hand, prying Rei’s own fingers open. Onto the open palm Nagisa places the headphones, the thin wires immediately identifiable.

“Where did I put them?” Rei asks quietly, turning back around and plugging them into the socket at the side of his laptop.

“On your bedside table, they were still plugged into your iPod, Rei-chan, you must have been listening to something last night,” Nagisa’s voice is accompanied by a small giggle, but Rei only sighs. “Hey, don’t be like that, don’t be harsh on yourself all the time, Rei-chan! You’re so serious,”

“I’m not,” Rei protests, a blush spreading over his cheeks.

Nagisa’s cold hands press against those reddening cheeks, taking Rei’s face in his hands. Rei can only imagine how close Nagisa’s face is, guessing by the feeling of Nagisa’s soft breaths on his face.

“You are, you’re my all-serious Rei-chan,” Nagisa whispers, pulling Rei’s face forwards.

The small kiss is hesitant, testing the waters as Nagisa always does. Rei’s told him he doesn’t have to do that, doesn’t have to be so careful, but Nagisa always is, and even though it’s illogical and unnecessary, Rei wouldn’t change it if he’s honest. Nagisa pulls away after their lips press together, and Rei follows him, trying to extend the contact a little longer.

There’s another giggle before Nagisa allows him it. Fingers are back in Rei’s hair, pulling just gently as the soft sounds of their kisses resonate through the room, all too loud in the otherwise silence. Rei can feel the smile on Nagisa’s lips against his own, and he smiles back, moving his hands down till he finds Nagisa’s hips, leaving them there.

“Rei-chan,” Nagisa breathes out as he pulls back, pressing their foreheads together. “As much as I would love to keep kissing you all night, I have that present to give you!”

Rei groans despite himself, and Nagisa giggles, stepping away.

“See, I saw this,” Nagisa begins, his voice a little further away this time, “on the way home after school today, and I thought, Rei-chan wasn’t in school today so I’d better bring him something to make him feel better!”

It is food, Rei thinks to himself.

“I think it was originally in English but someone translated it to Japanese, I’m not sure, but I’ve read the book and I’m pretty sure that’s what it said,”

The book?

Nagisa’s back at his side before Rei knows it, leaning over Rei and going straight for Rei’s laptop.

He quickly turns off the voice assistant on the laptop to stop Rei hearing the commands he gives to the computer and types in the password (it only took him two attempts to figure out when Nagisa got curious one night, much to Rei’s annoyance). He pulls the inside of his cheek into his mouth as he concentrates, squinting his eyes as he slots the CD into the side of the laptop and lets it open in autoplay, quickly pausing it before it begins. Careful not to knock the braille display at the bottom of the keyboard, Nagisa pulls away again and grabs Rei’s hand, guiding it to the mouse and then moving it so that he’s hovering over the play button.

“Put your headphones in and then click!” Nagisa tells him, and Rei, with a slight raise of the eyebrow, does as he’s told, fitting his earbuds into his ears (a rather difficult task with only one hand free).

He almost jumps when the voice suddenly fills his ears, not having expected that. He doesn’t, of course, see the small smile on Nagisa’s face as the expression on his own changes, mouth dropping open in surprise and then lips curling up into a small grin.

He clicks in the same place again, taking one of the ear buds out and tilting his head in the direction that he assumes Nagisa to be.

“The Great Gatsby?”

“Hm-hm! It’s an audiobook, Rei-chan! You have a lot of audio copies of all your boring physics textbooks but you don’t have anything fun, and I read this once and I know that it’s exactly the kind of soppy, romantic and unnecessarily deep crap that you like!”

“Hey, I do not like crap!” Rei protests, earning a laugh, as if Nagisa finds the idea that Rei might not have terrible taste in fiction books absolutely hilarious.

“I just thought, if you’re sick, it might give you something to do that isn’t boring.” Nagisa pulls himself up to sit on Rei’s desk, legs swinging in a way that they make contact with Rei’s knee every time. “Although, you don’t seem to be sick. Is something else wrong?”

Rei takes his bottom lip between his teeth, biting down on it gently. He makes a small humming sound at the back of his throat and crosses his arms, desperately trying to show Nagisa that he really doesn’t want to talk about it.

“Hmm, maybe we can listen to the CD together!” Nagisa suggests, seemingly getting the hint.

Rei hears him land on the floor, but he doesn’t quite get the warning that Nagisa’s climbing into his lap. He yelps, prompting another giggle (which quite honestly he’s okay with; Nagisa’s laugh is probably the one sound that he’d never get tired of) as Nagisa clambers onto him, positioning himself so that he’s balanced on top of Rei’s thighs, easily able to turn around and look at Rei if he wants to.

He takes one of the earbuds for himself and hands the other to his boyfriend before he settles comfortably against Rei, resting his head back into Rei’s shoulder.

“Oh!” Nagisa exclaims the second the voice starts reading the translated story, not thinking himself before he continues with, “The voice is light blue, that’s really-”

He stops himself, clasping a hand over his mouth. A quick thought of oh shit passes through his head, and he opens his mouth to keep talking and cover it up, but Rei’s there first.

“What do you mean, the voice is light blue?” Rei’s voice is timid, as if he’s afraid to ask.

“Uhm, Rei-chan, it doesn’t matter, don’t pause it!” Nagisa scrambles to stop him, reaching forward and placing his hand over Rei’s.

“No, I’m not putting it back on until you explain what you mean.” Rei says adamantly, closing the lid of his laptop to stop Nagisa putting it back on.

“I was just- I was just going to say that her voice is light blue, which is rare.” Nagisa grumbles as he climbs off Rei’s lap, leaving Rei with that slightly sick feeling he always gets when he isn’t entirely sure where Nagisa is.

“How can a voice be a colour?” He presses, turning his chair round to face where he guesses Nagisa might be – sat on the edge of Rei’s bed.

“I, uhm. Rei-chan, it’s not important.”

Rei disagrees; he knows that it is important, otherwise Nagisa wouldn’t be trying to hide it. The boy only ever tries to hide things that are important, telling Rei every other insignificant little thing as if to try and convince Rei that he’s truthful all of the time.

“Nagisa-kun, if it’s about you then it’s important to me.” He says, trying to be as reasonable as he can.

Nagisa bows his head, wringing his hands together. He’d always planned to keep it from Rei, figuring that it wouldn’t be fair to let Rei know. God, he couldn’t tell his blind boyfriend about this.

But Rei has him cornered. The boy is facing away from Nagisa, his chair directly facing his own bed. It strikes him that he must sulk on the bed a lot if Rei just automatically assumed that he’d be there, and for a moment he almost laughs about it, but then he remembers the pressing issue, and he walks around so that he actually is in front of Rei.

“I have this thing,” Nagisa starts, looking down again at his hands, “this little thing. It’s not important because it doesn’t really affect me, really. I have this thing, it’s called synaesthesia, and basically it means that I see colours when I hear sounds. Different notes are all different colours, different voices are too.”

“You… see colours when you hear sounds?” Rei says, words measured as if he’s tasting everything he says.

He can’t even imagine a world like that. He can’t even imagine colour. He’s read up on them a lot, of course. Through genuine, unbiased desire for knowledge or through pure curiosity, he isn’t sure, but he’s never been able to ascertain exactly what any of it means.

Blue: the colour of the clear sky and the deep sea, located between violet and green on the optical spectrum.

It means nothing to him.

Which is why, he supposes, Nagisa never told him. Perhaps the boy was trying to save Rei the knowledge because, in a way, it’s almost unfair. Nagisa not only gets to see colours as per usual, but he also gets them when he hears sounds, voices, and music. And Rei, for just a moment, can’t help but think that of course it’s unfair. He never has known, and never will know, what the light blue Nagisa was talking about would look like.

But, at the same time, it’s incredible.

“Some colours of voices are more common than others. I don’t really know how it works except it just sort of does and always has done.” Nagisa says with a shrug even though he knows that Rei can’t see it.

Rei pushes himself up out of his seat, knowing that it leaves him practically towering over Nagisa. He walks the four paces he knows it takes him to get to his bed and climbs onto it, kicking his shoes off in the process.

He lies back, shuffling around a bit to make himself comfortable, before holding out his hands in the general direction he guesses Nagisa is in considering the fact that evidentially he wasn’t actually sat on the bed. There’s a small frown set on Nagisa’s face as he pads over to Rei and takes up his usual place in between the taller’s legs, letting Rei wrap his arms around him.

They end up turning so that they’re on their sides after a moment or two, Nagisa’s back pressed firmly into Rei’s stomach. Rei lets himself run his fingers through Nagisa’s hair as he listens to the gentle humming coming from the back of Nagisa’s throat, a usual sign of contentment. Right now, though, Rei wonders if he’s doing it simply to fill the silence between them.

“Rei,” Nagisa says timidly, “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t… I thought it was unfair.”

“I know.” Rei replies truthfully, a smile dancing at the corners of his lips. “It’s not unfair, though. It’s just science. It’s not like you could control having it anymore than I can control being blind.”

“But-”

“It’s kind of beautiful, actually,” Rei mumbles before Nagisa gets a chance to say any more, and Nagisa’s chest crumples at the words. He feels his stomach basically turn itself inside out when he hears beautiful slip from Rei’s lips, as natural as anything but of course so foreign to Nagisa.

“Your voice is a rare colour too,” retaining the same low voice from before, Nagisa starts talking as he finds Rei’s spare hand and entwines their fingers, “Rei-chan’s voice is purple, royal purple. The closest I’ve seen to that before is Haru-chan’s voice, which is a kind of really dark purple all the time, but it’s nothing like yours, really.”

“Purple: The colour of royalty and piety which is made up of a range of hues of colour occurring between red and blue.” Rei recites, lifting a leg up and draping it over Nagisa’s.

“Aww, does that make my Rei-chan a prince then?” Nagisa says with a giggle, turning around so that he’s facing Rei.

“What? No!” Rei protests, feeling that infuriating blush spread to his cheeks again. He groans when Nagisa’s hands are back on his face, practically squishing Rei’s cheeks together.

“Yes! My Rei-chan’s voice is the colour of royalty, so he is my royal prince!”

“I also said it was the colour of piety-”

“That’s not important, don’t get so hung up on details!” Nagisa knees Rei gently in the stomach as he says it in place of a poke, and Rei scowls, pulling his hands away from Nagisa’s fingers and hair and crossing his arms instead.

“Aww, Rei-chan, that’s no way for a prince to behave! You have to stand up and be proud and tall and not cross your arms or pout like that!” Nagisa’s now free hand finds itself reaching for Rei’s ribcage, exposed from where his shirt has rode up, and Rei squeals, curling himself inwards.

“Your voice is all bright again.” Nagisa says quietly as he keeps tickling Rei, pulling every ounce of laughter he can out of the almost crying boy.

Even through the tears, though, Rei catches the words. He scrambles back against his wall, an instant sign for Nagisa to stop, and frowns.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, earlier, when I came in, your voice was kinda duller compared to usual. I don’t really know how to describe it. It’s just- sometimes the shades change a bit depending on the speaker’s emotion, and I wasn’t going to say anything because it seemed like you didn’t want to talk about it, but-”

“No, it’s not that. It’s not that I didn’t want to talk about it, it’s just I didn’t want to make you sad. I can’t see your emotions for shit, but I know your voice, Nagisa-kun, and you sounded happy.” Rei’s mumbling is barely audible, so Nagisa edges closer to him as he talks, biting the inside of his cheek gently.

“Yeah, I mean, I was worried too, though. It’s not like you to miss school unless you’re either vomiting everywhere or have a fever higher than a mountain,” half-jokes Nagisa, lying himself down next to Rei again.

“I felt a bit sick this morning, but nothing major. I was just kind of sad and frustrated and I thought it was best to stay at home, it’s not like I have neglected my school work or anything as I just did extra studying here,”

Nagisa hums to show that he’s listening. Not even a second later, though, he narrows his eyes, an idea striking him.

“How about,” he sits up, swinging his legs off the side of the bed and running towards the desk to grab a pen and paper, “I tell you what sounds I associate with what colours so then, even if you don’t know the colours, you at least have some indication of them.”

“What?” Rei asks, pushing himself up.

“I’ll make a list, right, and then I’ll dictate it to you later and you can type it up. So, for example, the sound of running water is a really dark shade of blue. And the sound of your braille typewriter is a really pale red colour,” Nagisa begins, and Rei can hear the scribbles of pen against paper.

“I have an important one to ask,” Rei says. He crosses his legs underneath himself to make his position more comfortable. “What’s the colour of Nagisa-kun’s voice?”

“Oh, uhm,” Nagisa hesitates, scratching the back of his neck. “I mean, it’s kind of boring. It’s yellow, maize yellow, I think is the official name of the shade.”

“Yellow: the colour of gold, butter and ripe lemons, found between green and orange on the visible light spectrum. Commonly associated with gold, wealth, sunshine, reason, happiness and optimism.” Rei rattles off, squinting his eyes slightly as he tries to recall everything. “I don’t think that’s boring, Nagisa. I think it’s perfect.”

It’s Nagisa’s turn to blush now, and he leaps off the desk chair he’d perched himself on, throwing his arms around Rei tightly.

“Love you, Rei-chan!” He half squeals, squishing Rei in his arms.

“Hey- Nagisa- You’re cutting off the circulation to my arms-” Rei tries, but Nagisa just laughs at him and keeps hugging, burying his face in Rei’s shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first reigisa fic i've ever actually managed to finish omfg ?? it's probably kinda shit but who cares lmao!! shout out to [northerndanpour](http://northerndanpour.tumblr.com/) for looking over this for me she's a bae go give her some love and pester her about finishing her own reigisa fics. i also just want to note that i have no experience with either of the conditions in this fic and therefore this is based on research and some creative licence; if there are any huge inaccuracies please let me know!!


End file.
